iPod Touch

Want to thank everyone who posted and commented in our Pocket Tunes contest, and especially to normsoft for sponsoring it. The remaining winners appear below and will be notified with instructions shortly on how to claim their codes. Please tune back in to our blogs in the future for more great giveaways.

This is one of those iPhone apps that looks simple on the surface, but is potentially useful beyond what you might expect. Yes, the app store is chock full of picture manipulation apps, but Peter Facinelli’s (one of the hit Twilight series movie stars) Vampire Transformer (by 211me.com) provides some clever pix editing tools, a good menu system, and adds social network sharing to the mix. It was indeed fun turning my wife into a vampiress...and a hot one, too if I do say so…

With the holiday season upon us, you better be prepared to bust out that iPhone for the spur of the moment family photo and/or video. And here is a ingenius new product to help you take that perfect photo or video. The U+3G iPhone Holder from G Design LLC is the perfect accessory to help attach your iPhone to a tripod. Not one of those small mini tripods mind you, but the larger sizes for camcorders and high end cameras. The holder accommodates all versions of the iPhone (original, 3G, 3GS).

With NumPad, you can use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a numeric keypad, an extended keyboard, or to annotate music. If you use a Mac with OS X 10.4 or later, NumPad does not require any additional software on your computer. The app connects easily through Screen Sharing, simply by following the directions found on the app. Windows users will need a VNC Server software like RealVNC.

Ground Effect is a vicious dichotomy of everything that should be right about racing games and everything that is wrong about them. It boasts some of the best track design I’ve seen in a mobile racing game to date, yet this same track design makes the races aggravating and seemingly impossible to win at times. The game encourages you to think outside the box and then punishes you for doing so. Luckily the game gorgeous to look at, has a cool soundtrack, and despite its frustrations can be quite fun to play. If you understood all that you probably don’t need the remainder of this review, but for the rest of us…

Apple has a great head start on other platforms, with their App Store. And it may be an insurmountable lead. But there is still work to do.

Apple needs to create a new class of apps, specifically "ONLY on the iPhone".

As Microsoft, Google, and others target the key developers, it's time for Apple to say these our ours and you can't have them. (Here's what Microsoft thinks about apps and how the important ones will be on every platform... http://gizmodo.com/5407068/microsofts-ray-ozzie-apps-dont-make-your-phone-special?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo)

Imagine if Apple offered key developers (at Apple's discretion) one or more of the following:

Tetris proved to be quite an addictive game and was clearly well loved, as evidenced by the myriad of clones that followed over the years. I will unashamedly admit that I too was a junkie, but the one thing that Tetris lacked was a real purpose. Of course nowadays the developer would probably just throw in a bunch of achievements and “voila”, you have a purpose. That doesn’t really count. Thankfully, Tumble Jumble has come along to remedy the situation. It’s clear that the developers hold some respect for Tetris in their hearts, but they also seem to realize that such a game can be made with a purpose. And a couple of amusing characters, to boot!

We are extending our Pocket Tunes giveaway for another week, so post a comment here before Saturday, 21 Nov 2009 about your own favorite streaming apps, and you might be selected as a winner! Pocket Tunes is one of the best ways to experience the joy of internet radio streams. You can check out my review here, and Werner's excellent write-up here. One winner has already been chosen, and more will be selected next week.